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ANCOM Discussed the Strategy on the Development of BWA Systems in the 3400 – 3800 MHz Frequency Band with the Electronic Communications Industry

22.07.2011
 
ANCOM and the representatives of the electronic communications market have discussed today the Strategy Paper on the national implementation and development of BWA systems in the 3400 – 3800 MHz frequency band for 2011 – 2020, which establishes the principles, conditions, procedure of granting the rights to use the spectrum in this band for broadband wireless services, as well as the method for its refarming.
Further to the public consultation process, ANCOM decided to initiate the beauty contest procedure for awarding national licences in the 3410 – 3800 MHz band in 2014 instead of 2012, as initially proposed. The beauty contest will take place in two phases: a preliminary phase during which the tenderers will submit to the Authority final intention requests for the purchase of a licence in the 3.5 GHz band or of a licence in the 3.7 GHz band, and an actual selection phase that will take into account the outcomes of the first phase and will take place only if the number of requesters is higher than the number of licences available in these bands. If the number of requesters is lower or equal to the number of available licences, the offers will no longer be assessed and the licences will be directly awarded to the requesters.
The county licences will be also awarded in 2014, when ANCOM will allot in each county, by beauty contest, licences for the use of radio frequencies for the provision of broadband access electronic communications public networks and services.
The national licences will be awarded for a 10-year period and will encompass minimal coverage obligations, on development phases of 1 year, 3 years or 5 years from the issuance date. The county licences will be awarded for a 10-year period and will encompass minimal coverage obligations, on development phases of 1 year, 2 years and 3 years from the issuance date. The coverage obligations will include the priority coverage of a certain share of the low urban areas (resulted in the number of cities which has to be covered).
The beauty contest procedure was identified by ANCOM as the most suitable one for awarding these licences in order to ensure the continuity of the provision of these services to the end-users. The tendered bands are ancillary bands, complementary to the provision of Internet access services in lower bands and offer high capacity in locations with numerous requests.
As well, ANCOM decided to extend until 31 December 2015 the validity of the licences for the use of radio frequencies awarded, at a national level, in the3410-3800 MHz frequency band, and thus the operators will have the right to use the new national licences from 2016. Further on, via these frequency bands, the operators will be able to provide data transmission services (Internet access services, VPN, videoconference services etc.)
Following the public consultation, ANCOM decided that further analyses and debates are required before taking a decision on the technical matters under the Strategy Paper which are related to the object of a CEPT/ECC decision, which aims at adopting a new radio channel arrangement for the 3400 – 3800 MHz frequency band. This new arrangement relies on completely different technical principles as opposed to the current channel arrangement considered in the paper subjected to public consultation. Upon clarifying these aspects, the Strategy Paper will be reviewed and submitted to a new public consultation procedure, when only the issues related to the new channel arrangement for the 3400-3800 MHz frequency band, which is under adoption by CEPT/ECC, are to be tackled, among the most important being: the number of licences to be awarded (in direct liaison with the radio spectrum amount to be allotted under the either national or county licence), the method of refarming the frequency band and the maximum amount of radio spectrum that may be detained by each operator licensed in the concerned frequency band.
The conditions imposed by ANCOM, related to both the bandwidth and the limitation of the spectrum amount an operator may detain, are aimed at avoiding the risk of wasting or excessively fragmenting the radio spectrum allotments, as well as at ensuring the principle of technological neutrality and attracting on the Romanian market competitors that hold the necessary financial, technical and administrative capacities in order to quantify to the largest extent the potential of these frequency bands.
There are seven providers currently operating in the 3410 – 3600 MHz band, with five of them holding national licences, three local licences for data transmission services on fixed wireless access support (FWA), and one provider holding both types of licences. Only one provider that holds a licence for a Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) national network operates in the 3600 – 3800 MHz band. All national licences expire at the end of September 2013, except for the licence in the 3600 – 3800 MHz band, which expires in July 2011. Local licences in the 3410 – 3600 MHz band have different validity periods, expiring in: August 2011, January 2015 and December 2015.